Thoughts from the Bar Library (a sestina)

Here in this Colonial library
dwell long dying dreams
dreams once ripe and un broken
now beaten and shaded purple
not mourning their loss
untouched by a human soul

Ask me where I leave my soul
while I sit in this library
how I make peace with my loss
Do I smile? Breathe heather of my dreams
the moors a brittle purple
that my stride flays broken

Have you ever been broken
by tides that tore your soul?
Have you ever lain naked, purple
and cold, in this, or any, library
spines clawing into your dreams
silently feeding on your loss?

I have. With every pore this loss
has seeped into this heart: broken
by failure heightened in restless dreams
and I have woken the soul within my soul
chronicling a russet library
of forsaken blood turning purple

Smiling shades of purple
shields that masked my loss
footsteps that fall in the library
in a flash I see you: broken
and it echoes deep within my soul
in multi-layered dreams

Oh, they are not dead, my dreams
only misplaced : in a sea so purple
sailing on a rudderless soul
burnt under the weight of loss
bent and twisted but not broken
in this Victorian library

I need to free my dreams of this library
walk into purple clouds that have broken
and release my soul from imagined loss.